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"Bloostar" launch! (link)
Hello All,
The Spanish “Bloostar,” a satellite launch vehicle that is designed to be lofted above most of the Earth’s atmosphere by a Project Skyhook-type balloon before the first of its three stages is ignited, has been tested and recovered successfully in a brief, suborbital test flight. This Space.com article http://www.space.com/36070-zero-2-i...aunch-test.html includes a link to a video of the test flight. Due to the near-vacuum conditions in which the vehicle begins its powered flight, it is very flattish and stubby, and this structurally more efficient—and lightweight—arrangement of its stages serves to further increase its payload-to-orbit capability.
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Black Shire--Draft horse in human form, model rocketeer, occasional mystic, and writer, see: http://www.lulu.com/content/paperba...an-form/8075185 http://www.lulu.com/product/cd/what...of-2%29/6122050 http://www.lulu.com/product/cd/what...of-2%29/6126511 All of my book proceeds go to the Northcote Heavy Horse Centre www.northcotehorses.com. NAR #54895 SR |
#2
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Scale saucer, anyone?
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I love sanding. |
#3
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Quote:
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Black Shire--Draft horse in human form, model rocketeer, occasional mystic, and writer, see: http://www.lulu.com/content/paperba...an-form/8075185 http://www.lulu.com/product/cd/what...of-2%29/6122050 http://www.lulu.com/product/cd/what...of-2%29/6126511 All of my book proceeds go to the Northcote Heavy Horse Centre www.northcotehorses.com. NAR #54895 SR |
#4
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I say just duct the ejection charge to the outer nozzles, so you get a nice "poof" out of all them. In any case, that'd be a spiffy saucer design. |
#5
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If this satellite launch vehicle concept takes off (no pun intended), especially if it becomes popular and is adopted by other private launch providers, I can foresee two- or three-stage vehicles (possibly with reusable first stages) not terribly unlike the Estes Mars Lander eventually being developed, since such stubby shapes--like the Bloostar vehicle's--are structurally efficient yet aren't aerodynamically hampered, because they begin powered flight in a virtual vacuum. In addition: The proposed axisymmetric (*non-lifting* during atmospheric entry, unless provided with an off-center Center of Gravity, like the Gemini, Apollo, and Soyuz capsules) manned Mars landers--and the robotic sample-return Mars spacecraft designs--of the mid-1960s through the 1980s, which were slightly streamlined for ascent through the < 1% Earth sea level pressure (just 6 to 7 millibars surface pressure!) Martian atmosphere, were aerodynamically similar to the Bloostar-type balloon-lofted satellite launch vehicles. Such designs (the proposed manned Mars landers and the Mars sample-return robotic spacecraft, and the Bloostar [and any future balloon-lofted launch vehicle designs of this type]) would make interestingly different Sport Scale, Scale, Concept Scale, and/or scale-like model rocket kits of (or similar to, depending on the specific design) the saucer type. As well: Even the aeroshell heat shields of the Viking landers, the Mars Pathfinder lander, the Phoenix lander, and the Spirit and Opportunity rovers would make good saucer-type model rockets. Since their aft covers are (they're still lying on the Martian surface with their parachutes attached, as orbiter photos have shown) more pointed than their blunt, conical forward heat shields (which were jettisoned before the landers [or rovers] were separated from their aeroshell aft covers), models of these aeroshells could ascend *backwards*. The aft cover would serve as the "nose cone," and the motor mount would be installed inside the bottom tip of the blunt conical heat shield, in the center. The model aeroshell would fly up--backwards--under rocket power, then would descend slowly, braked by the blunt heat shield at its bottom. (As an [optional] refinement, drag-reducing, lightly spring-loaded doors in the aeroshell's back cover and in the heat shield could be pushed open by the "pass-through" airflow during ascent, then would close when the model began to descend from its apogee.)
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Black Shire--Draft horse in human form, model rocketeer, occasional mystic, and writer, see: http://www.lulu.com/content/paperba...an-form/8075185 http://www.lulu.com/product/cd/what...of-2%29/6122050 http://www.lulu.com/product/cd/what...of-2%29/6126511 All of my book proceeds go to the Northcote Heavy Horse Centre www.northcotehorses.com. NAR #54895 SR Last edited by blackshire : 03-17-2017 at 09:27 AM. |
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